I’ve been rolling my eyes at the uproar over fake blogs (or “character blogs,” as some are calling them). Now it appears they have a name: flogs. And a wiki has appeared to keep track of them called, creatively, FakeBlogsWiki.
Links:
Fake Blogs
FakeBlogsWiki
“This site is a clearing house for information about flogs’, or fake weblogs created by corporate marketing departments as lame marketing exercises,” the site proclaims.
The wiki is brand-spanking new and has little on it so far. But I’ll give credit to the site’s originators for their approach. It seems they don’t have anything against flogs other than the fact that they’re so awful: “We don’t have a problem with flogs per-se,” we’re told; “if marketing departments want to spend their budgets this way, that’s entirely up to them. We just wish they’d do it better-most flogs are embarassingly bad.”
The site lists three flogs so far: one from MSN, the McDonald’s Lincoln Fry, and AP’s Bad Language, which is distributed to AP subscribers.
The wiki also seems like it will provide links to writing about flogs, such as one from Big Green Blog that lists reasons flogs could lead to some serious consequences for companies that employ them, such as demonstrating how out-of-touch the company is and embarrassing itself in front of its customers. Like marketing efforts have never done that before.
So far, my blog entry on fake blogs hasn’t made the list, but I’ll probably add it myself.
Shel Holtz is principal of Holtz Communication + Technology which focuses on helping organizations apply online communication capabilities to their strategic organizational communications.
As a professional communicator, Shel also writes the blog a shel of my former self.
